Local Exhibits

Chris Bristow: No Place

Lane Meyer Projects

November 16, 2018 – December 17, 2018

Opening Reception: Friday November 16, 6pm - ?

Restricted Valley in Aspen - Oil on canvas - 56 x 42” - 2018

Marie felt ill. At this moment in time she could not remember the words for ill, or what quantity ill came in. Her state of consciousness felt how an atom of carbon might feel drifting in space; unknown. She sensed ownership that this was herself, as there was a dull sense of familiarity that this was the same being her mind had occupied. This gave Marie a sense of comfort, as if the rolling waves of her anxiety had momentarily been quelled, yet at the peak of this absolution Marie could feel the kindling of anxiety coming back through her body.

She had a flash of memory of a poster of Earth from her fourth-grade classroom. She became certain she was from earth, she was an earth woman who had a family. She had a house too. She fondly remembered houses, they had small gardens in the front and were large and made of concrete. She remembered her house exactly. She would park in the driveway and walk past her planted sunflowers and crane her neck to see the top of her concrete tower; she began to play with words in her head. And questioned the word tower as it relates to home, it did not seem as though there was a successful neural roadway between the two but with the dread of further confusion, she steadfastly began to retrace her steps from her driveway to her front door.

She closed her eyes, she was not dreaming. Marie got out of the object that would normally take her to her driveway once again and mentally prepared each step. She recalled seven squares of poured concrete slabs leading to her front door. She counted with each imagined step. “One. Two.” she gave special attention to small details. Marie gave life to what concrete had been, how there had been rain and ice on these 7 concrete steps, how over the 20 years she had lived in this house and she had watched these 7 concrete slabs deteriorate with time.

Time emerged suddenly in her new world. She had grown so accustomed to non-time that contemplating its passage made her stomach turn. She was almost halfway to the front door, she was on the third slab of concrete, cracked and moss growing between the gaps; this amused her, and a lucid memory gave her confidence. She directed her shut eyes towards the envisioned stairs; longer in run than rise and pebble dashed, they reminded Marie of the playground her mom would take her to as a child. The stairs had the same look and feel of American government buildings from the 1970’s. This seemed unusual, but her desire to rest in familiarity superseded rational thinking. Again, Marie began to count as she could sense her concentration breaking. “One. Two. Three.” She felt profound accomplishment having situated herself on what she remembered being the stairs leading to her house. “Four. Five. Six.” She paused to collect herself. “Six stairs and I have traversed 10 feet latitudinally. This is taking abnormally long” Stuck again with the dilation of time, she grew fearful that doubt was certain, and that she would concede these were not her stairs. She flipped a switch in her head of denial and persisted.

“Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.” She began to find a rhythm similar to counting sheep and was happy to continue counting stairs. “Seventeen. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. Twenty-two, twenty-three. Twenty-four.” She saw behind her that she was now quite high in elevation and was bothered by the vividness of said imagery; in her glimpses of a normal working memory she had not recalled such a creativity. She got to step 35 before vertigo prompted her to open her eyes and seek resolution elsewhere. No Place.

Chris Bristow graduated from Pratt Institute in 2014 with a BFA in painting. He worked as an art handler at Sotheby’s flagship in New York City, where he says roaming 400,000 sq. feet of catacombs for two years was highly influential on this current body of work.